


Slicked Back Hair and a Metal Bat

by SimplyEssa



Series: Whole Wide World in my Hands [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coward Lotor (Voltron), Flirting, Humour, Lance Is A Mafia Boss, M/M, Some Fluff, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, im not mad that adam doesn’t but i don’t mind including him in fics, keith is the sugar baby, shiro is married to adam in this, whispers softly — fanon universe exists which means adam watermelon does too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 22:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16982763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplyEssa/pseuds/SimplyEssa
Summary: “What are you doing?” he asks, voice and face impossibly passive, as Keith tries to pull the bat out of his grip. The man only tightens his hold and narrows his eyes, using his free hand to grab his wrist.“What am I doing?” he snaps, dropping the bat in favour of his wrist. The grip is like iron, and he swears he can already feel bruising from the tight hold. “This is my apartment! Get the fuck out!”“Your—“ The man looks absolutely flabbergasted and angry for all of three seconds before he looks around, eyes going wide. “Shit,” he hisses letting go of Keith’s wrist. Keith winces and pulls his wrist to his chest protectively, scowling at the intruder who’s still holding his bat.The man blinks and looks down at him before running towards the door.





	Slicked Back Hair and a Metal Bat

**Author's Note:**

> !!! i found this in my drafts, fixed it up, and here you go! <3
> 
> enjoy! (this was all written on a phone with no beta so please excuse any errors hdjsjdjskdn)

  
He’s startled awake by a loud crash.

His first thought, in his half asleep, half awake delirium, is to tell Shiro to go the fuck to sleep, but then it hits him that he’s an adult, now, he doesn’t live with his brother, and even if he did, his brother’s away on a business trip with his husband.

His second thought, as he slowly sits up, trying his best to blink away the blur of sleep, is that maybe his neighbour’s cat, Kova, got in again, but then he remembers that his neighbour died, and her new owner lives twenty minutes away.

His third thought, the one that should’ve been his first, is that someone’s breaking in.

The thought has him wide awake in seconds, scrambling out of the thin blanket to plant his feet on the freezing, wooden floor.

He thinks himself lucky for taking the night off of work (even if it was just to unpack his boxes from moving in so recently. It’s a little more than recently, but school has had him too busy during the day to do anything about it) as he grabs the baseball bat he leaves by his door with clumsy hands. If he hadn’t have taken the night off, he’d be at the bar, dealing with drunken idiots, and not at his crummy little apartment to stop a robbery.

The bedroom door creaks ominously as he opens it and he winces, trying to remain sneaky and quiet, to surprise the robber, but he can’t do that if everything is noisy when he touches it.

He peeks outside of the narrowly opened door and is, quite frankly, surprised to see a man around his age closing the window and looking surprised by the amount of boxes laying around.

“What the fuck..?” he mumbles quietly, scratching his head as he looks around. Keith frowns, grip tightening on the bat, as the— oh, wow, he’s tall— man takes a step forwards. “Why does Hunk have so many boxes lying around?”

Who the fuck is Hunk? Hunk as in their bouncer?

He doesn’t ask, though, despite the freaky coincidence, because, really, how many people, nowadays, are named Hunk?

He pushes the door open enough to let him leave the room, looks around briefly, weighing his options, before deciding to charge at the intruder.

The man only seems to notice his presence once he’s a foot away, his arm raising to hit him with the bat, and… He looks confused, and kind of mad.

He supposes it doesn’t matter what this man looks like, though, as the bat is brought down—

With surprisingly fast and strong reflexes, the man catches the bat before it can hit him, and, with a scowl on his face, pulled the bat, and by default, Keith, towards him.

“What are you doing?” he asks, voice and face impossibly passive, as Keith tries to pull the bat out of his grip. The man only tightens his hold and narrows his eyes, using his free hand to grab his wrist.

“What am I doing?” he snaps, dropping the bat in favour of his wrist. The grip is like iron, and he swears he can already feel bruising from the tight hold. “This is my apartment! Get the fuck out!”

“Your—“ The man looks absolutely flabbergasted and angry for all of three seconds before he looks around, eyes going wide. “Shit,” he hisses letting go of Keith’s wrist. Keith winces and pulls his wrist to his chest protectively, scowling at the intruder who’s still holding his bat.

The man blinks and looks down at him before running towards the door.

A yell pulls on his vocal chords as he goes after him, but he only unlocks it, steps outside, and slams it shut, disappearing from view as footsteps pound outside the thin walls.

By the time Keith manages to get to the door and twist the knob, he’s gone, and so is his bat.

***

“Someone looks tired,” Lotor, one of the regulars at the bar, comments, eyebrow quirked. His stark white hair shines in the dim lighting and Keith is once again confused on how in the hell Lotor manages to keep it so perfect.

“No kidding,” he mumbles, as he cleans the glass someone had just spit in to spite him for not sucking the guy off. Hunk, their bouncer, had escorted him off the property a few minutes ago after the guy had tried to force him to. “What do you want today, Lottie?”

That was a thing, too.

Lotor, during his first time here, had offered him twenty dollar tips for every drink he had, if he called him Lottie. Keith had refused for all about a week before giving in, after the heating in his old apartment had broken, and he hadn’t had enough money to fix it.

“The most expensive and exquisite thing you have to offer,” Lotor says, a flirty smile playing on his lips, and Keith blanches. After all of the drunken assholes he’s dealt with tonight, he’s not in the mood for Lotor’s games. He’s not in the mood for their _best customer’s games._

“Right,” He ignores that Lotor is so obviously toying with him and puts the cleaned glass down, bending over to grab one of their most expensive bottles, along with a can of beer and some limes. “It’ll take a few—“

“You know that isn’t what I meant, darling,” Lotor purrs, fingers catching lightly on his wrist, and Keith suppresses a huff as his body freezes.

“Lotor—“

“Ah,” Lotor smiles, teeth as white as his hair, and Keith attempts to pull his wrist away, heart beating far faster than it should be, “I haven’t heard you say my birth name for a few months. Your delicate little lips sounding out those syllables is beautiful, darling—“

“Let go of me, Lotor—“

“Why should I?” Lotor asks, smoothing the sleeve of his shirt back. Keith swallows hard and forces a scowl onto his face, despite the obvious fear in the slight shake of his hands. He’s heard rumours of Lotor and how horribly he’ll treat the people he wants to get them. What he’ll _do_ to them when he gets them. “I’ve wanted you for quite some time, you know. I’ve made attempts before, but now… you’ve forced my hand. I was hoping it wouldn’t come down to this, Keith. Now, come, see what it feels like to taste the cock of someone who wants you. Of someone who will stop their payments that keeps this bar running if you don’t.”

Where’s Hunk, when he really needs him?

He loves working at this bar, as shitty of a pay as it is. He’s come to think of the other employees of family, damn it, and without Lotor’s constant visits that keeps several deadly gangs out of there, keeps drive bys away, he doubts this place will last much longer.

“I—“

“Hey, Grape!” Someone yells, and Lotor’s hand tenses around his wrist as a scowl appears on Lotor’s face.

“Not now, McClain,” Lotor growls out, turning to face the man that is undoubtedly McClain. “I’m busy.”

Keith’s jaw nearly drops at the sight; he’s in a nicely fitting blue tux, sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, but not covering his eyes. There’s a glittering stud in the lobe of his left ear and Keith swallows hard, because this is the man that stole his baseball bat.

“And so am I, Grape. This bar is my client, and I would kindly request your presence to vanish within five seconds,” McClain says, and Lotor’s eyes widen. His grip is relinquished on Keith’s wrist in an instant and Keith wastes no time in bringing it close to his chest, hissing at the throbbing pain. It’s not bad, though sure to leave minimal bruising. “Unless, of course, you’d like to deal with Hunk and Matthew.”

Lotor books it.

McClain laughs softly, something that shouldn’t make his chest tighten, and runs a hand through his short, brown hair, screwing up a hairdo that must’ve taken hours to do. It had looked so perfect.

“I love it when Lotor runs like that,” he comments, as he turns to Keith. Keith bristles, feeling all to self conscious of the way his shirt stops just above his abdomen, and how tightly he fits against his chest and arms. He has abs, sure, though not very well defined, and the muscles on his bicep are clear as ever, but only when he flexes. His hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat, too. In the presence of someone who looks like a god, he’s allowed to feel ugly. He probably has a ten pack.

“Where’s my bat?” Keith’s tongue works faster than his brain and he swallows thickly as soon as it’s out, intimidated by the hard set in his eyes.

“Your bat?” McClain looks shocked, at first. Keith sees the moment it clicks in his head as his face softens and he lets out a quiet ‘oh’. “I went back, like, twenty minutes later, and left it against the railing of your patio. Sorry about that, by the way. I saw you up and watching a movie— nice choice with the Lorax, by the way— and you looked scared. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Keith scoffs, crossing his arms, but he definitely was. It was one of his first weeks in his apartment and someone had broken in; who wouldn’t be scared?

“Sure,” McClain rolls his eyes and strolls slowly to where Lotor had been sitting, taking a seat and looking around with curious eyes.

“So, pretty boy,” Keith feels himself blush at the compliment and ducks his head, feigning cleaning a glass, “How can I make it up to you?”

“What?”

“Oh, I know!” McClain says, then, snapping his fingers, “I’ll take you to dinner!”

“What— no! What the hell?” Keith looks up, eyes wide and face a mask of shock. He shakes his head fast, setting the glass down. “I don’t even know your name.”

“The name’s Lance,” Lance tells him, a suspiciously flirty smile on his face. “Now, how about that dinner?”

“It’s still a no,” Keith snaps, crossing his arms against his chest with a scowl. A mantra of what the fuck? runs through his mind as he scans this Lance, making sure he doesn’t have some type of firearm to make him go out with him. “Leave before I call the bouncer—“

“Hunk works for me, bud’,” Lance says, still smiling. “But if you wanted me to leave, all you had to do was ask. I already talked to Allura, so I’ll be by more often,” he fishes something from the breast pocket of his jacket and places it on the bar, sliding it towards him. “Think about it, bud’. I’ll be around.”

He leaves, after that, and Keith stares after him in bewilderment.  
  
Lance McClain, the man who broke into his apartment, had just asked him out, scared away one of the biggest mafia crime lords of the city, and given him a piece of paper with his number. He’s pretty certain he’s protecting the bar now, too, so creeps like Lotor will be forced to leave, won’t they? Lance doesn’t seem like the type of guy to like the ones who have one night stands.

Maybe he could use this date. He must be powerful if he scared away Lotor; people will know to stay away.

He puts the paper in his jeans and goes back to work, trying his best to forget about what just happened.

—

At 4:30pm the next day, he pulls out the piece of paper when his shift ends. He worked during lunch for clean up and ladies bingo day— the old women loved him, and he got a lot of tips for being kind to them.

There were no unwanted visitors like the last few times, and Keith can’t help but feel it’s Lance’s doing as he spots him leaning against the building across from them.

He puts the number into his phone and presses call.

“McClain,” he answers, voice smooth and in a flirty tone. He sees him smile from across the street, slowly standing up straight. “Come to take me up on that dinner, pretty boy?”

“You’re lucky I don’t have plans.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> !!!!!! i hope you enjoyed !! i’m thinking of continuing this in some way— be it a series or another chapter, i’m not sure, but keep an eye out!
> 
>  
> 
> also: s8. i am. MAJOR. hype.  
> i appreciate enthusiasm and all that jazz but Please do not put spoilers into the comment section of any of my fics for at least a week! i will be watching it during school tomorrow, yes, but others might not be able to see it asap and they might enjoy reading comments, so please avoid that!! if you’d really like to talk to me about s8, i have a discord server for that with a spoilers channel, or u can yeet my discord (just ask for either) 
> 
> i am so sorry for not posting more often; a lot of things have happened recently D: (ex: i need glasses? apparently. and my nose broke fjsjfksjdb) but i have two more things on the way for christmas time!! secret santa’s, babes 
> 
> see you next fic!!


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